1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an endoscope inserted-shape detecting apparatus and, in particular to an endoscope inserted-shape detecting apparatus that can detect the shape of an insertion section of an endoscope inserted to a subject.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an endoscope has been widely used in medical fields, industrial fields and so on. In a medical field, an endoscope is used for performing various treatments on a predetermined part or a predetermined tissue of a body cavity of a living body, which is an affected part. In particular, in order to insert an endoscope from the anus side of a living body to perform various processing on a lower digestive tract and to insert the insertion section into a curving body cavity smoothly, an endoscope inserted-shape detecting apparatus that can detect the position of the insertion section within the body cavity, a curving state and so on is used also with an endoscope.
An endoscope inserted-shape detecting apparatus as described above has been proposed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-081304, for example. An endoscope inserted-shape detecting apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-081304 has a configuration and operation for displaying the inserted shape of an insertion section of an endoscope on a monitor by detecting a magnetic field generated from a source coil deployed in a probe within an insertion section of an electronic endoscope as signals by a detecting block through a sense coil and then performing signal processing on the signals by a host processor.